


Vipers and Vultures

by morphineinatin



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Drug Abuse, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Hate Sex, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Just very sad, Lots of it, Nothing is explicit, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, minor tw for needles, our lady went through it mid show, set from the beginning of chant to just after our lady of the underground
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:06:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23496502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphineinatin/pseuds/morphineinatin
Summary: Perhaps it was the influence she held herself under like a head under water, perhaps it was wishful thinking of a wife who could no longer tell love from hate. But - with all the resentment she held for that man - she never once had doubt in his loyalty.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53





	Vipers and Vultures

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to give writing some heavier Hadestown pieces a shot, this came out of it. Enjoy!

It was rare that Persephone allowed herself a moment of emotional vulnerability. Her feelings presented themselves in bitter words and snarls before she drowned the internal misery in whatever drink she grabbed first. She was miserable, truly, her existence might as well define the word, but never would she dare let that present itself. Outwardly, she was a dog with a piercing bark and a deadly bite. Her words were sharp, gasoline to the match that was her husband. The flames of their fighting was only wreaking more havoc up above, she knew, and in the aftermath of an argument when both locked themselves away in a house she always felt was too big for just the two of them, that guilt ate away a little more at her stability. She cried sometimes, alone as could be. She cried over what once was and over what they had become. She cried over what could have been and over what was. But then, it was back to the bitterness. It was back to the resentment. It was back to avoiding each other any way they could and licking their wounds in their respective dens, because the reality of things now was that, if they wanted to avoid a fight, isolation was the only effective method. 

Their house was big, the underworld was big, but sometimes it felt so damn small. So damn small when all she wanted was to forget he was down there with her. More like her down there with him. Queen or not, she was trespassing on his turf. He could get rid of her if he wanted. Sometimes, in the real dark places of her mind, corners she liked to keep unexplored, she wondered if he wanted to. She wondered if he wanted to get rid of her for good, not just six months every year. If he regretted that day he’d begged on bended knees for her pity upon his heart and made her his wife, if he would do it again if he got the chance or if he’d just leave her in her mother’s garden for the rest of time. Honestly, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answer. 

Like it or not, she believed that she had gotten it. 

When he showed up early for her, cutting summer off short for his own selfish gain of a wife he would show no real sign of love besides the horrendous machinery covering the vast expanse of the underground kingdom he claimed were built in her name, she’d been annoyed. She’d been angry, and she let him know. She had kept that distance between them close to tangible, giving him no contact besides the touch of her hand as she stepped into the train. There had been distance between them for years now. They hadn’t even slept in the same bed since gods below and above know when, and they exchanged no touch in their half year interval together besides the very sparing occasions in which they put their animosity into a secondary position. It was never gone, that resentment between the king and queen, even in what most would consider the most intimate of moments, and that translated into the rare times once every decade or so the two joined in some desperate need for release. For her to feel something that wasn’t blinding rage or sickening sadness and for him - well, she couldn’t say what it was for him. Maybe it was power. Maybe it gave him some satisfaction, seeing his wife a mess beneath him even with all the hateful words she would so often fire his way. He was always so caught up in his appearance as the underworld’s powerful king with an iron-fist rule that she wouldn’t doubt it. The man wasn’t mad with power, per say, but damn if he wasn’t close to it. Back when the world was young, when their love was young, when she was young and he was still older, things hadn’t been this way. From the moment she came down, the two were barely ever away from each other. She was all over her husband the second he showed his face on the surface, and the first days of her arrival back home were rarely celebrated anywhere that wasn’t their bed. Back when she was still excited to leave for winter. When they still shared a bed and when that was where they made love. What they did now could hardly be called that, because there wasn’t a trace of love in their actions. She never looked at him when he brought her over that edge, wether she was bent over his desk or against a wall, and there were none of those affectionate mannerisms exchanged the way there once were. No kisses, no admiring touches, no words of worshipping love whispered to one another, rarely did either even take off what wasn’t necessary. When that was over, their purely carnal hunt, it was back to distance. To pretending the other didn’t exist, for him to drown himself in mindless work and her in alcohol. 

When she stepped off the train into the smoky heat and blinding light, she found herself in a brief moment of silent shock at what lay before her eyes. It was awful. Her cold glare dropped, as did her hand from her husband’s. It had been bad for years, decades even, but, when she walked past those walls that stretched who knows how high, she had never she imagined it would get this bad. The heavy metal crash of miscellaneous machinery and high pitched whistles sounding from factories - which she would assume signified a shift change if she didn’t know better - was bad enough, the artificial lights burning in the back of her eyes and the heat that made her fling that heavy fur right off her shoulders was even worse, but the real kicker was the workers. The ones building the wall even higher, reenforcing her cage bars with iron to make her yearly escape ever more difficult. The ones walking into the mines with their heads bowed and eyes empty. That’s what sealed the deal. The dead weren’t supposed to be working themselves to the bones that remained of them in their physical form up top. This was never what he was supposed to do. Hell, even if he must, he could at least give the poor things the most basic of rights. They were formless; completely indistinguishable from one another besides the tones of their deathly greyed skin. Their uniforms covered whatever made them human, what had once made them who they were. They were nameless, too. They wouldn’t have been able to tell you their names even if they were permitted. The workers weren’t a new addition - they’d been around since the industrialisation began - but she’d never seen the reality of it before. She’d never been close enough for the sheer inhumanity of it all to smack her in the face as hard as it had, and it disgusted her that she’d never had this revelation before. 

There had been arguments over the kingdom. Over the treatment of the workers, over the factories, over the walls, but never like this. Never had anything quite compared to the screaming match that went down on the first day of an early winter. Persephone yelled and yelled and yelled until her throat was raw and she was gripping the handle of her bag for dear life so hard her fist shook. She’d shouted loud enough to shut him up, saving his breath rather than try and elevate his voice over hers. But soon, her breath ran out, and it was his turn. 

Persephone had thought now, after centuries of marriage and decades of arguments, she’d heard everything. They’d wielded every weapon she thought they had in their armouries at each other and given wounds that were bloody and deep. She knew what Hades would hurl her way in a fight like this, she was prepared and every year the pain numbed itself further. But no, that’s not what he did. He didn’t throw a past used phrase at her, he didn’t take a dig at her drinking or her drugs or how she left him every six months like she expected him to. She couldn’t have expected what he said, she couldn’t have prepared for what her flames had burned him down to. 

Even through their hardest of times, Hades was a loyal man. Loyal to a fault, some would say, as was she. Through year after year, good and bad, neither one had ever taken another lover. They’d never dream of it, of breaking their vow of loyalty to their spouse, even when the storms they’d brought upon the world above were strong enough to blow everything that remained away. As much as she wore him down, he’d never dare break on her. But even the strongest of metals can be broken. 

“If you don’t even want my love, I’ll give it to someone who does.”

Those words felt like an arrow through her chest. Like her entire body was frozen despite the unbearable heat surrounding her. Her mouth was agape, completely empty of any of her biting words. It didn’t end there, no, of course not. Her husband kept on at it, and she could do nothing but stand, silent and staring as if she could will him to take it all back. As if she could turn back time all the way to the moment he first laid eyes on her and try it all again, try not to make whatever detrimental mistake they had along this road they had once walked hand in hand. His words hit her like an icy waterfall that her violent summer sun would not permit, and when he turned away, something within her sent her hand reaching out to try and grab his, try and keep him with her rather than let him find a woman who would appreciate the gilded cage he’d built around her, a songbird that had no need to migrate away from his world. No avail came from her attempt. He slipped from her hands just as she did at winter’s end, slick as an eel and quick as an asp. 

-

Next thing she knew she was locked in a room - a bedroom that was not his - body slumped against a wall as she did what she did best. Better than she was at ruling a kingdom or bringing about spring. Bottle of wine half empty in her hand, needle of morphine in her arm, doing all she could to bite back the fear she wished to every single god he didn’t still have the ability to create within her. She didn’t remember how she got there. Not so much what drove her to this point, she remembered those words well. Her head was swimming with the mix of intense drinking and self medication she had grown to rely on, her inner workings a mess that she still decided was better than anything she could be sober. In that moment, she thought up two things. 

Firstly, she was being pathetic. Drugging herself up on the floor of a spare bedroom in her own damn house over what? Some threat her husband made to scare her into silence? What kind of queen was she? As if she even deserved to be called that anymore, after how many decades she’d spent ignoring her duties out of nothing but stubbornness and spite. She should be stronger than this, stronger than him and his damned ways after every storm she’d weathered in this marriage she’d locked herself into so young, so naive to how the world could become with one misstep somewhere along the lines. 

Secondly, and more importantly, her husband was a liar. She decided as such for her own comfort. He’d never told her one damn thing that wasn’t the truth, but what reason did he have against breaking that trend now? Against pushing her over the edge and remind her what he could do if she didn’t shut up for once in her life. Maybe he was becoming more like his brothers in that fashion, but not the other. Never the other. He wouldn’t do that to her. Perhaps it was the substances taking ahold of her, but she managed to ignore every reason he had to leave her then and there, or even just to find a pretty little side piece to make her jealous. Perhaps it was the influence she held herself under like a head under water, perhaps it was wishful thinking of a wife who could no longer tell love from hate. But - with all the resentment she held for that man - she never once had doubt in his loyalty. 

Some time or another, though, we all have to face reality. Persephone didn’t have to wait much longer for her turn. 

-

She didn’t look like herself when she first saw the songbird. Black dress, hair back, arms covered in obvious entry marks from her less socially accepted addiction that she had given up hiding away from mortal eyes long ago. Everybody knew, there was no illusion, that the queen had fallen down somewhere darker and more dangerous than anyone was willing to throw a rope down. She was among the workers who her man somehow managed to care for less than her, which was a feat within itself. It hurt to see them. It hurt, because she knew their suffering wasn’t her husband’s doing alone. She was compliant in their oppression, she had taken no action to free them besides aggressively informing the king that he should. What useless excuse for a queen was she? Letting her guilt eat away at her rather than do a single thing to help them. She wasn’t so lost in the workers that she wouldn’t be easily spotted, though, and she very quickly she was. 

The girl’s eyes met hers first. They shared the darkness of her own, but they lacked the light, the spark of energy that even in the depth of her self destruction Persephone didn’t lose. Dark circles bore deep into her face beneath the empty eyes, her body sporting barely any flesh upon those bones. Her skin, that once held the same gold tone of the goddess, was now ashen, greyed and pale by virtue of malnutrition. She was barely beyond a corpse, this girl, but that wasn’t how she had existed in Persephone’s memory before this excruciating moment reared its head. She knew this poor thing as a feisty dance partner, an inexperienced yet fearless drinker, a lover of the mortal boy her brother had taken under his wing. Her eyes struggled to accept the sight before her eyes, and when they caught the large male hand on that small shoulder, her eyes flitted up to meet her husband’s. 

Well, it held the appearance of her husband, the sight she saw. But her husband didn’t look at her like that. Her husband didn’t give her such cold glares, such emotionless eyes scanning over her as if she was nothing. Just another shade in his realm, some nameless ghost lost in his pile of contracts. The two had learned to hold full conversations with just a look shot to the other, but it was hard for her to say anything with hers but a pitiful plea. 

“No.”

The king raised his head. Just enough to look further down upon the queen who’s height he already succeeded majorly. She had seen him do that in particular to his subjects, reminding them of who was in charge here, but never had his mannerisms towards those he owned been directed her way. His hand slid down the songbird’s arm as he directed her forwards, and those godly eyes never broke contact with those of their spouse, no matter how badly Persephone wanted to look away. The answer was in those eyes, ringing clear as the whistle screaming from a factory in the distance. 

“Yes.”

When that heavy office door clicked shut, man and girl out of sight, whatever inside Persephone that had been holding her together was shattered like a thin pane of glass. How did this happen? How had everything lead here? She had been so certain, so sure that even in their marriage’s abysmal state that these lengths would never be gone to. But here she stood, alone, and it didn’t take a genius to understand what he was about to do. The girl might have looked at a glance like her, in her youthful days, before starvation took its hold. The little thing was fragile, something she had never been even before he’d first laid his hands on her. She was tiny, she was desperate and dying and grabbing at anything she could to save her. Undoubtedly she had no idea what awaited her in terms of a contract, if he would even bother with one. Maybe he didn’t want to employ her. Maybe he’d like to keep her how she was, flaunting her in front of his wife. Something younger than her, something quieter than her, less addicted and less trouble than her. That girl was a shadow of what Persephone herself had been and what she remembered the girl once was. Gone was her spirit, her fire, her excitement for a new side of life that her lover had shown her. In her memory, Eurydice was fun. Eurydice was in love. Eurydice was her friend. 

And what of Orpheus? What of her lover? That boy who adored that girl the way her husband had once adored her. He would be destroyed when he heard the news, that his beloved wife was gone. That she had been stolen by some selfish man in pursuit of revenge, if that was a way of identifying what he was doing. She didn’t know how to label it, this... this action he decided must be taken. He wouldn’t care, the king, he never would. To him, Orpheus would just be a boy, and Eurydice just a girl. Nameless faces he saw as obstacles easily destroyed to achieve his goal. They were mortal, he was divine. They were impoverished, he owned all wealth. Their blood ran red, his did gold. They were nothing to him, nothing but chess pieces he could move and discard whenever he wished. And now, she saw, that she was very much the same. 

He cared not for how this may affect any one of them. He had stopped caring about others long ago. That was easily gathered from one quick glance around the beings that practically cowered before her. They feared her as they did her husband, they wouldn’t even say her name, and she hated that. She had never wanted to be above the mortals nor the shades, but by pure virtue of title she always would be. They were so similar, she realised in that moment. Painfully so. They shared the imprisonment, the ache for something to ease the pain which was something that would never come. She had her methods, though. She had her poisons. And if she couldn’t unlock their shackles, she could at least loosen the grip

“Anybody want a drink?”

-

The slam of the door behind her pounded in her head like a hammer, but she didn’t care. She stopped caring about herself long ago. She half expected some snide remark from her husband to reach her from a room nearby. She wanted it. She wanted him to make a comment on her drinking, on her reliances, on anything. For a noise, any kind of sign that he was there, but... nothing. Silence engulfed her, but she still couldn’t be sure that she was alone. Her husband wasn’t here, no, she knew his signs, but she could be. 

She lifted the bottle held loosely in her slender fingers to her lips, taking another swig at the dwindling contents. How many she’d gone through alone that night, she couldn’t count, much less how many she’d shared amongst the shades at her secret little speakeasy that her husband most definitely knew about but hadn’t had time to bring up yet in an argument. As she made her way up the daunting staircase, she wondered if he ever would. If there would be any further arguments between them. If she would ever take another trip down once this winter came together a close. If she’d still hold her title when it did. 

Once she had completed her venture upstairs, she stumbled slowly down the long hallway and stopped outside the door leading to the bedroom the king and queen once shared. Something within her brought her free hand out, reaching to push the door open, but abruptly paused. What if she was in there? It started in his office, yes, but what a nail that would be in her coffin to leave the little thing there, barely taking up the space in his bed that she once did. Morbid curiosity almost overcame her, but no. She didn’t want to see. She didn’t think could handle that much. The implication of it all had been enough. 

Standing outside that room made everything really start to set in. Before, when she had first laid eyes on the poor girl her husband had hauled down in his wake, her mind hadn’t truly processed the weight of it all. She’d been too lost in horrific shock, in begging disbelief, and the quick intake of drink after drink after drink provided another temporary barrier to stop life from reminding her of what she could not ignore. Her grip around the bottle tightened, her other hand clenching into a fist, and she bolted back up the corridor to somewhere else. Some different room intended for guests they never received. Not down here, not even when they could stand the presence of one another. Nobody wanted to be down here since the dysfunction began.

She flung the door open and slammed it shut just as swiftly, her body pressed to the solid wood with quickening breaths moving through her frame. No. No. This wasn’t happening. Her heart cried that this couldn’t be so. How did she get here? Where even was she anymore? What happened to rip her from that dreamlike day in her mother’s garden only to hurl her back down to earth in this wretched moment? When did the world get so cruel? Where did they go so wrong? She swallowed harshly, but her mouth went dry as a bone. The room barely felt steady around her, the dryness of her mouth contrasting with the tears welling up in her eyes. How did he make her feel like this? After everything she’d withstood, every storm she had weathered head on, he shouldn’t be able to. She shouldn’t care, really. She should be thankful that there was finally excuse for them to rid themselves of this relationship that lost its love years prior. But she didn’t want to. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to lose him, as dreadful as things had become, she didn’t want to live that life again. She had been his wife for the majority of her existence. He knew how to get by without her. He already managed six months a year without her, what would another added six be? Just a drop in the flood of his solitude - if he didn’t decide to keep his canary singing for him. What would she do? A rejected queen with no idea how to deal with the adversities above or below without emptying a bar’s worth of alcohol down her throat. What a sorry excuse for a goddess she was. Had been back then when she was some secondary child at her mama’s side, was now as she undertook Hera’s role with far less grace. Wretched thought after wretched thought span through her mind in a frenzy, her hands shaking tensely as her nails dug into her palms. In her search of any kind of relief, something she had done she had done time and time again, she brought the bottle up to her mouth again, tilting her head back only to find it empty.

With a sharp cry of anguish and frustration, she slammed the bottle against the wall, the glass shattering upon impact. She screamed again. And again. And again and again. She screamed and swore and cursed his name as hot angry tears streamed down her face in dark streaks dragged by her makeup. She had managed to withhold them in front of the workers. They needed to see her with some kind of positivity, for their sake she kept herself together. But now, she was alone. So, so painfully alone besides the possibility of the young girl’s presence. The goddess fell to her knees, pounding her hands against the wall in a fit of blinding emotion, too many to identify as one. Her throat was soon raw from her cries, but she kept at it. She shouted and she roared loud enough for the whole damn kingdom and it’s stone hearted king to hear. Her banshee wails only ceased when her voice and body gave out, no more sound ripping from her torn vocal cords but weak little whimpers as she opened teary eyes she scarcely remembered closing. Her body was trembling, and she felt like she may collapse if she were not already on the ground. She suddenly became conscious of a sharp pain in the palm of her hand that once held the now shattered bottle, blinking away the blur of her sight as she raised it to examine. Sticking out in every direction where pointed shards of broken glass, only dug in further by how she had slammed her hands to the wall. Shakily, she pulled the large, razor sharp pieces of glass from her skin, watching through tear clouded eyes as golden blood coated her palm and trickled down her wrist. The crying started again, much to her dismay, but it was eerily dissimilar to what had proceeded it. These were weak, broken sobs, quiet but no less tragic in their nature. The walls of the underworld closed in around her heart and crushed it in her chest, the truth cold and real and almost tangible like the metals down in the mines. Dark curls clung to the dampness of her face, an ache building up behind her eyes as even breathing began to hurt. Everything was painful now. Her head hurt, her throat hurt, her hand hurt, her eyes hurt, her heart hurt. Pain, was her existence.

A sound in the uneasily quiet building caught the air in her throat on its way to her lungs. The closing of the door. Not a slam, no, but the noise rang it’s way up to her. She froze in her place, hearing her husband’s shoes against the expensive marble of their lower flooring. Then up the stairs. Subconsciously, she held her breath, and again she was lost as to what it even was that she wanted when his heavy footsteps sounded down the hallway. An internal part of her being wanted him to come towards her, into the room she’d hidden herself away in. Another fought that, deciding that if she saw his face she’d shatter his jaw. She turned her head slightly, eyes landing on the door when she heard his footsteps approach. Perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her, but she was convinced she heard him pause on his course to the bedroom - once theirs, now his. His steps ceased, as if he could sense the presence of his wife on the other side of the wall that separated them, just as the larger version outside did for half of every year. She could sense him, too, it wasn’t just some cruel trick played by her own wavering psyche. He was there. It could have been moments or just as easily hours that passed, god and goddess struggling with what to do. They stood with nothing but a doorway between them, keeping them apart the way they chose to as long as they could even when the were kept down here together. What to do escaped the both of them, unmoving. Still, when she heard him walk away, she pressed her uninjured had to the wooden frame of the door, and an old ache for him made itself known. 

It was such a small action, walking away from her. It was nothing he hadn’t done countless times before when her ways became too tiresome for him to deal with. But it was a reminder. A reminder of what was now reality, of what she couldn’t escape from no matter where in this house she hid or what she pumped into her veins. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t win. 

Persephone rested her back against the bedroom wall, golden blood staining the black velvet draped over her body. She stared up at the ceiling, begging for the numbness she could ever achieve. In that moment, more than ever, Persephone was certain that this would be the world’s last winter.


End file.
